The opening employee arrived to work at Sumela Turkish and Mediterranean Restaurant on N. Main Street Monday morning to find the place a disastrous mess.

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Someone broke into the restaurant overnight. The window on the side patio door was shattered, its pieces still held together by the outside film of the window, creating a slip at the bottom like a doggy door. The cash registers were destroyed, remnants of its plastic outer shell scattered all over the floor.

The restaurant’s owner, Mehmet Cakal, hadn’t arrived to work yet. An employee called him on his cellphone about 9 a.m. while he was running an errand.

“I called the police,” Cakal said. “It felt bad. I was surprised because I didn’t know how much damage there was until I got here.”

Police arrived shortly after he did, he said, and examined the scene. They found every wire in the electrical box on the outside of the building cut.

“The alarm, you see, they cut the wires in the back, they cut them up first before they started coming inside,” he said. “Then they cut the motion detector, they cut the cameras up, after they came in. This has happened before, but not like this.”

The last break-in was in 2008, he said.

“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “The damage is actually very expensive. It’s an extra thing to deal with, extra work, it takes a lot of time and people who have to work today, now they have to go home. It’s affecting everybody. But I’m glad it didn’t hurt anybody.”

Later in the afternoon, Cakal noticed blood on the receipt rolls where the suspect may have cut themselves during the break-in, he said.

The restaurant is closed on Sundays but Cakal drove by to check on it about 9 p.m., he said, and “everything was fine.”

As customers continued to stop by the restaurant, employees had to turn them away while others were inside cleaning the mess.

“I apologize for our customers who came by today,” Cakal said. “They were really disappointed. I feel really sorry and I apologize to them, but we will reopen tomorrow.”